Tag Archives | Cosmic

This year we celebrate the 100th birthday of the cosmic reign of the avant-garde jazz musician Sun Ra whose official birthday is celebrated on May 22. For those who know the man’s music, there is no need for an introduction here. For neophytes, here is a sampling of the story from the Sun Ra Arkestra’s official website:

Eclectic, outrageous, sometimes mystifying but always imbued with a powerful jazz consciousness, the music of Sun Ra has withstood its skeptics and detractors for nearly three generations. And well it should, since Sun Ra has been both apart of and ahead of the jazz tradition during that time.

Like Duke Ellington and swing-era pioneer Fletcher Henderson, Sun Ra learned early on to write music in an arranged form that showcased the specific talents of his individual Arkestra members, and he has retained the services of some of these musicians to this day: John Gilmore, Marshall Allen, and Julian Priester for example since they first joined in the 1950’s.

Last month I discussed some noteworthy etymological connections relating to encounters between the Earth and cosmic material, as well as some of the effects of such an encounter. I mentioned that an important constituent of this material delivered to Earth by way of comets and asteroids was the platinum group metals, or PGM’s and I quoted Soviet biologist Dr. Vasilieyev of Tomsk University regarding the remarkable genetic effects observed in the post 1908 impact environment at Tunguska, Siberia, where and I concluded with this statement:

“. . . incursion of cosmic material into the biosphere can indeed catalyze extraordinary evolutionary changes, which brings us to the threshold of the forgotten knowledge of cosmic alchemy. . .”

The key word here is catalyze, which means to be acted upon by a catalyst, a substance which either causes or accelerates a chemical change without, however, being permanently affected by the reaction.… Read the rest

Discovered two days ago (likely due to its small size). Reports BBC News:

The asteroid, estimated to be about 11 m (36 ft) in diameter, was first detected on Wednesday. At its closest, the space rock — named 2012 BX34 — passed within about 60,000 km of Earth — less than a fifth of the distance to the Moon. Astronomers stressed that there had been no cause for concern. "It's one of the closest approaches recorded," said Gareth Williams, associate director of the US-based Minor Planet Center.
"It makes it in to the top 20 closest approaches, but it's sufficiently far away ..." he told the BBC. The asteroid's path made it the closest space-rock to pass by the Earth since object 2011 MD in June 2011.